Ryan returns to Football backfield

Lost, for the most part, in all the aerial fireworks during the last five minutes of the Penn football team's nail-biting comeback win over Brown, was last season's offensive mainstay for the Quakers -- junior running back Kris Ryan. Ryan, hobbled by a pair of pesky injuries thus far this season, carried the ball 16 times for 88 yards. It was the most productive game of his four-game season. "At times I felt a little rusty," Ryan said of his performance against the Bears. "I'm missing reps in practice. I need to be able to get those reps in so that I'm a little bit sharper in the game." Ryan's first carry Saturday was a six-yard run on the Quakers' second touchdown drive. He also scored his third touchdown of the season on a 15-yard run with 11:26 left in the second quarter. While Ryan was the Quakers leading rusher Saturday, averaging 5.5 yards per carry, he wasn't much of a factor as Penn was digging its way out of an 18-point deficit in the fourth quarter. The Quakers only ran the ball once on their three scoring drives of 0:17, 0:27 and 1:13, and that run was a one-yard dive into the end zone by Penn quarterback Gavin Hoffman. "If you look at what Penn's offense is right now, it's been throwing the football," Brown coach Phil Estes said. "I think something like 70 percent of their offense is throwing it, so that's what we need to stop. The name of the game today was stop it and we have a chance." Still, given the choice, Estes would have rather not faced Ryan. "I didn't want to see Kris Ryan back," Estes said. "I was hoping he'd wait one more week. He's a tough, straight-ahead runner. I didn't want to see him back, but I thought the other two backs, I'm not going to say they're just as good, but they've done a decent job." Ryan's main backup is senior Mike Verille, who carried four times for 15 yards and a touchdown on Saturday. While Verille and Todd Okolovitch have done a solid job during Ryan's absence, the Quakers are most likely a better team with Ryan starting at tailback. "I think for us to really be an effective football team, we're going to need Kris Ryan," Bagnoli said. "And a healthy Kris Ryan, not just a 75 percent Kris Ryan." Bagnoli was very upbeat about Ryan's efforts against Brown. "This was the first step in his coming back," Bagnoli said. "He averaged over five yards a carry, which is what I think we're going to need. I certainly think it puts us in a situation where we can now give him the ball 25 or 30 times a game." Bagnoli wants Ryan at full speed for the Ivy League stretch run. Right now, the Quakers are in a four-way logjam at the top of the Ancient Eight with Yale, Harvard and Cornell. "Down the stretch, you'll have days where, with the wind or the cold, or whatever, you're going to need to be able to run the football effectively in order to win," Bagnoli said. The Quakers played without Ryan in their first two games this season, against Lehigh and Lafayette. The 1999 Ivy League rushing leader returned to have his best performance -- before Saturday's -- in the Quakers' league-opening 48-13 win over Dartmouth. Ryan rushed for 51 yards on eight carries and scored a touchdown. Two weeks later, Ryan re-injured himself against Columbia, when he got nine yards on just two carries. He sat out of Penn's loss at Yale and returned Saturday to have his best performance of the year. He felt good about it, too. "It's getting a lot better," Ryan said of his injury. "It's still going to take some time to get it back to 100 percent, but it's the best I've felt since I've been hurt." News and Notes After his 476-yard passing performance, Gavin Hoffman was an obvious selection yesterday as the Ivy League's Offensive Player of the Week... Joe Phillips was also honored by the Ancient Eight. The freshman was named Special Teams Player of the Week for his outstanding punt return work that helped put the Red and Blue in position to win the game.

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